Episode Twenty Nine: Winter Solstice

Virtute has been doing his best to get all the vitamin D he can over the last few weeks. He’s the kind of cat that can be a little down during the long gloomy days in the deepest depths of winter. We’ve been chatting a lot recently about darkness and how we cope with it as mammals. I suggested maybe he needed some sort of supplements or one of those fancy lights. He, of course, had other ideas. “I’m sure that those gadgets and supplements work for folks,” he began, “but it’s not what we need. As we created these large cities and these electrical systems we sharply severed our connection with the moon cycles and with our rotation around the sun. It’s destabilizing in a profound way. I think what we need is to re-engage with those cycles in meaningful ways.”

I thought about this for a while and then had to state the obvious, that as city dwellers it’s not really easy to connect with those things. “Yes,” he said pensively staring out the window, “but we do have opportunities. I know that each year you and Jenny spend the solstice walking the Leslie Spit late at night – and it’s in those moments that you become conscious of the moon and its powers. Or when you sit down with Jenny’s family during the Mid-Autumn festival and share mooncake – where do you think that practice comes from? What if that was more regular? What if you spent time observing? Engaging? Remembering that time and space are inseparable?” I had to call him on this – how could a house cat like him know such things? He frowned, “What do you think I do each night while you sleep? I make my way onto my stoop in your bedroom and watch the cycles of the moon. And in the day? I spend it searching for the position of the sun. We are all just flecks of time-space in relation to these celestial movements.”

I told him people think he should write astrology. He retorted that, “We should all live astrology.”